Parents of the HS Class of 2011 - Original

<p>Hi 2011 parents. I usually post on the 2009/2013ers thread, and sometimes the 2012/2016 thread, but I hope you will welcome a small bit of advice from me. I’m reading a lot of CC posts on the parents forum about late teacher recommendations. It maybe too early to think about it, but please consider this next fall: give the teachers a hard copy and an email with the names, addresses, any school codes, the student’s first name, middle initial, last name, and deadlines for each school recommendation your child is asking they write. If the teacher will need some sort of student id number don’t forget to provide it. It’s also a good idea to include a note next to the name of the school as to whether it’s an application recommendation or a recommendation for a certain program or scholarship. A few stamps are also nice. I know my D asked several teachers to submit the same recommendations to multiple schools or programs. She gave them this information to avoid confusion and missed deadlines. And don’t forget to have them ask for the recommendations EARLY in the year! </p>

<p>I hope your kids are all having a fantastic junior year! It’s a tough one. I know my sophomore son, already filling out his schedule for junior year, said those exact words yesterday.</p>

<p>rrah-thanks for the words of wisdom. To say junior year is tough is an understatement! Just hoping that she survives with a fairly decent gpa!</p>

<p>rrah - yes, thanks. S’s school has the rec thing very controlled and insists the kids fill out a form by end of Oct with all the information you listed and givecopies of it to the teachers and the GC. I already have S thinking about who he plans on asking for recs and told him to plan on giving his teachers a heads up before summer break. He may apply to at least one school that allows application submittal over the summer so I want everything in place before school ends.</p>

<p>I’ve been reading/researching colleges for a while now with D. But am having a hard time narrowing the list down. How did you go about this?</p>

<p>D is not particular about location. We live in MA, she’s fine with colleges anywhere she says. [ Both H and I moved 10,000 miles away for college - so it would seem a bit hypocritical to ask her to stay close to home]. She is thinking of a major in biology/genetics and possibly somehow including math (her favorite subject). Very generic - most schools will have a good program. Size of school - she seems to prefer slightly smaller schools (around 3-5K kids). Again, not a strong preference - she would consider larger schools with honors colleges.</p>

<p>So, how do we narrow down the list? She visited a few schools last summer - she liked Brandeis and Union. Loved Bucknell. Didn’t like UPenn or Penn State. These schools were not chosen because she wanted to go there - we visited them since we were near there anyway for other reasons.</p>

<p>Any suggestions?</p>

<p>arisamp, does she have preferences as to weather, rural vs. urban, etc? That can cut things down considerably. Take a look at science facilities and the course guide. Is she a student who would like complete scheduling freedom or is she okay with a core or distribution requirements? And then there is money. If you need financial aid it pays to do a lot of research about how schools meet need, percentage of need met by loans, etc.</p>

<p>Have you tried using the college selector at the college board web site?
[Free</a> College Search | Scholarships | College Admissions Requirements](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>http://www.collegeboard.com/)
We used that along with colleges I have seen mentioned on this site and others that offer good merit money. I look at those schools and if I think S will like it, it has a good dept in his prospective major , it makes my database. We have had S go to information sessions that have been held locally since the start of the year, that is how he fell in love with Carnigie Mellon actually. </p>

<p>If I could make one comment about choosing a school for your D, I have an undergrad in chemistry and went to a small LAC. I got a fine education, but course selection was limited due to the small size of the school. I think when it comes to math and science you want lots of options, take a look at not only the course descriptions but what has been offered the past few years. A course only offered once or twice every 2-3 years may end up not being available to your D.</p>

<p>arisamp, has your D tried the counselor-o-matic at Princeton Review? [Test</a> Prep: GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, SAT, ACT, and More](<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/com.aspx]Test”>http://www.princetonreview.com/com.aspx)</p>

<p>Pizzagirl had a lower-tech system that she described starting in post 314 here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/599371-daughter-hates-her-matches-safeties-21.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/599371-daughter-hates-her-matches-safeties-21.html&lt;/a&gt;. It’ll give your D more things to think about in what she’d like from a school, at which point you can post to the parent’s forum that your D is looking for a midsized school with lots of on-campus housing with friendly students who like playing club-level curling, and that she’d like to learn how to make sausage and really complex origami.</p>

<p>Slithey,
I too read the NYer article and saddened to hear the state of the CA schools in detail. I was not college bound when I graduated from HS, but I eventually completed 2 years at a CCC and transferred to Cal. I have always been grateful that I was lucky enough to grow up in CA, as state that not only provided some of the best colleges in the nation, but also a way to reach them!</p>

<p>Cooker: I wouldn’t worry too much about having to visit campus without all of the students there. In general, we found that we could pretty easily get the feel of a school without the general student body there, so it wasn’t a big deal. The one school we visited without students that we could get no feel for without the students wandering around was Brown.</p>

<p>Holliesue: Don’t worry at all about visiting colleges in the first days of the new semester. Last August/September, my D and I visited Cornell and Georgetown in the first days of their fall semester, and it was actually the first time my D started to really start to love the colleges. I think the fresh energy, enthusiasm of the wide-eyed freshmen and excitement of the returning students to be back with their friends, etc. really added to the whole feeling of the campus, and actually was a very positive experience for us.</p>

<p>Arisamp: As previously stated, definitely visit other neighboring colleges when at UMass Amherst - Amherst/Williams/Hamilton/Hampshire are all very unique, and all right there - even if none of those are high on your student’s list, it is great to have comparisons, just more experiences and impressions to draw upon.</p>

<p>We started the whole “visit” process spring break of sophomore year (very, very early!), and are now almost finished - in what is the normal timeline, most of my D’s peers are just beginning to think about the visits…now, we will have one last school to visit - in June, I think - Univ. of Virginia - college #23, then we MUST be done!!!</p>

<p>mamom: We visited Carnegie Mellon last summer when going through Pittsburgh on our long college visit odyssey - such a great school. Both my D and I were really impressed by it, but my D is all about crew, and they are a club team only. We will revisit it with D2 in a few years!</p>

<p>arisamp: Check out some of the LACs. Occidental has a reciprocal agreement with CalTech for classes, and others have 3/2 programs with tech schools. Whitman with CalTech and others. You get the best of both possible worlds that way</p>

<p>Tomorrow, have to give my D a timed practice SAT which we will send to the person running her SAT Prep course. This is so he can tailor the course to the students. And the final lap thus begins</p>

<p>The rubber is meeting the road in our household. D will be busy with her SAT Prep, and her list is pretty well completed. Just wondering if anyone has stumbled across any hidden gems college-wise, and could you share them. It is surprising when you come across a college that you never even heard of before, but seems so right. For my D this would have been Whitworth College in Spokane. Lovely campus, good academics, and nice financial aid (especially Merit). They are a Presbyterian campus, and tell people who come during the summer that the students should come during the school year to make sure that they understand the environment. We will be doing that in her Senior year. But its in her top choices right now</p>

<p>Less than a year to go. oh boy</p>

<p>Yes SAT prep going on here–though maybe not enough…;o}</p>

<p>whittling down 39 schools…
casting a wide net but perhaps too wide right now—hopefully the Jan SAT will narrow us into the upper half of the field…</p>

<p>its a busy yr…AP test, SAT2 tests, ACT and SAT…etc etc…</p>

<p>anyone else’s kids feeling stressed and pressured this junior year. My D, who always keeps emotions in check, cracked last night under the pressure of her challenging course load, upcoming SAT (which she has no time to study for) and EC obligations. I never felt the kind of stress she feels to perform until grad school. quite honestly I worry about what is happening to this generation! They feel so much pressure to perform and succeed at everything. She has no time to just relax and be a kid! This can’t be healthy.</p>

<p>holliesue - i have said the same thing - about the early pressure - many times. i do see the hs phase, with all the busy work, the more labor intensive one than the college phase…</p>

<p>my ds2 is feeling the pressure of the upcoming sat as well. and, of feeling that he will not have taken the classes for the satII high scores, and his one satII go around so far did not produce scores he wants to use…</p>

<p>holliesue: my daughter lost it last night as well…must be the moon…and this is a kid who is not overscheduled at all!!
I thought that it was only the top achieving kids who feel overwhelmed; guess not…we are really taking this year very slowly to alleviate any stress; doesn’t seem to be working though…</p>

<p>I do recall from my older daughter that 2nd semester junior year was the most stressful time in her young life…now a sophomore in college, nothing has come close…not even admission season of senior year…</p>

<p>Stressed kid here too. Robotics is in high gear - the students have two months to build a robot from scratch and my son is doing the programming for the robot and creating a program for a scouting report, plus doing a video for the club. Mid-terms are next week but some teachers have chosen for the kids to do a project instead which is better for son, but another time-taker. I dislike mid-terms.</p>

<p>Son is going to take a SAT prep class at school starting next month which will consume four hours a week, but at least that will be a contained time, which I think will work out better. Something about prepping for a test in a group as opposed to trying to carve out the time by himself just seems better for him psychologically. It ends two days before the March SAT sitting. </p>

<p>Our saving grace is that he will have a study hall starting second semester, five days a week. Having gone through this icky Junior year with two other kids, I knew that would be important.</p>

<p>On top of this, I’m still not sure about what colleges to visit during our very short Easter break. Visit colleges that I know he will like and we may or not be able to afford or visit ones that are both financial and academic safeties but that he may not like as much? I truly with there was a week he could take off this coming Spring so we could do some college visits.</p>

<p>We are going through that stressful period here at home as well. Heavy course load, time consuming ECs, things not going too well on the sports front - D admitted that she was getting very stressed out by all this. Mid terms are next week - she is planning on a weekend of studying. No preparation for the SAT or the ACT. I feel like I can’t even ask for that now! She has signed up for the ACT in beginning of April and wants to do the March SAT - but if she does sign up, she’ll be going in with no additional prep - at least that’s the way it looks like now.</p>

<p>With all this, we haven’t had the chance to whittle down the college list at all. We are still struggling with ways to narrow the list and figure out if we should do any visits this Feb vacation. Feels like we’ve been stuck in first gear for a while now on this front…</p>

<p>D will be taking an ACT prep class (for two hours on Saturday mornings) starting in two weeks. It’s a group session and like kathiep, we think having that time carved out will help ease the stress. D is a stay-up-all night studier, and I’d rather not add ACT prep to that study schedule. The sessions end the week before the April test date. So she’ll finish the prep sessions, go off on an AP Euro trip to Italy, and come back to take the test! Hopefully between the prep sessions and a fun trip, she’ll be in a good frame of mind on test day.</p>

<p>the only thing my D is looking forward to is over spring break her spanish class is going to Costa Rica. Unfortunately they have to miss 3 days of school just prior to break in order to go…and that is going to wreck havoc with her math and physics classes!
she has never been a type A person. Just plugs away and is happy at getting low 90’s (with the occasional slightly lower or higher grade). NOw all of a sudden she is talking about how she HAS to get into a good school or her whole life will be a wreck. Her dad and I are both SUNY grads, and I have told her that she will go to SUNY unless she can get enough merit aid to make a private affordable. I am now thinking she “heard” that as SUNY isn’t as good and if you want a “good” school you need to bust your self! Personally I would rather she just RELAX, take a less demanding course load and go to SUNY than see her kill herself with stress and anxiety in the push to get merit aid and go private. OY!</p>